Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:00 pm
Donald Trump advertised success in a tweet Sunday, based on a Fox News national poll (image above). Trump’s response, as though Fox is completely reliable in this, was “Thank you America! #Trump2016.”
Of course, it turns out there were things Trump wasn’t advertising, like the headline Fox News used in releasing the poll:
Fox News Poll: Voters trust Trump on economy, Clinton on foreign policy, nuclear weapons
It doesn’t stop there, of course. Two new polls showed Trump and Clinton in a virtual dead head for the first time, a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (Clinton over Trump 46-43) and a Washington Post/ABC News poll (Trump over Clinton 46-44).
Trump, well known for hypersensitivity to criticism, was quick to crow about his “success” (in a phone interview, of course) and give credit to Sanders supporters who apparently think a guy who opposes everything Sanders stands for is the next best thing to Sanders:
“I hear and I look at polls, and I hear a lot of those people are coming with us. A lot of the Bernie Sanders’ voters, they do not like Hillary Clinton. … A lot of those people will come with me.”
Right. Fox ran with that. Because picking out the selective bits of reality they like and inventing the rest is what they do.
Fox News also ran with the idea that Trump and Clinton have equally bad unfavorable ratings when in fact, the Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent viewed Clinton unfavorably and 60 percent viewed Trump unfavorably.
We can compare this to Gallup’s January polling which found that two-thirds (67 percent) have an unfavorable view of Trump, while only just over half (52 percent) have an unfavorable view of Clinton.
Well hey, 67 percent and 52 percent, and 60 percent and 53 percent, are nearly the same thing, right? USA Today solved the number problem by not actually lying but misleading:
“The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found over 50 percent of potential voters view Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump unfavorably.”
We’ll have to remember how this “math you do as a Republican” works next time they tell us how far from grace President Obama has fallen. Because, you know, 53 percent isn’t really less than 60 percent – when looked at from a certain way.
We can take a moment to hearken back here to Election Night 2012, when Megyn Kelly turned to Karl Rove and asked, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?”
Well…Neither Donald Trump nor Fox News are advertising McDonalds CEO Steve Easterbrook’s announcement that President Obama’s economy is a big success.
So yes. There is some math you do as a Republican going on here. After all, we have an April Associated Press-GfK poll that contradicts the Fox News poll:
“Americans trust the Democratic front-runner more than the Republican businessman to handle a wide range of issues — from immigration to health care to nominating Supreme Court justices.”
Remember Dana Perino saying as a conservative you don’t have to choose your facts? Trump naturally ignored the AP-GfK poll altogether, and here is an aspect of the Fox News poll Trump didn’t advertise on Twitter:
It’s hard to make a resounding headline out of,
“More than one-third of voters Trust Trump over Clinton with nuclear weapons!”
You won’t see that in Trump’s twitter feed.
Fox News also reports that,
Trump is the candidate voters believe will do a better job “telling the truth to the American people” (+15 points), managing tax dollars (+14 points), and restoring trust in government (+8 points).
This is interesting, because they trust a guy who refuses to pay any taxes to handle our tax dollars, and a guy who lies 9 out of 10 times he opens his mouth to tell the truth. We can thank the mainstream media for making Americans stupid enough to believe these things.
The downsides, as we’ve noted, Trump isn’t so eager to recognize, for example, as Fox News also tells us,
Trust of the candidates is about equal when it comes to using military force (Trump +1), nominating Supreme Court justices (Clinton +1), and “encouraging values you believe in” (Clinton +2).
These are biggies. Despite years of lies about Hillary Clinton, he is barely trusted more than her to use military force, and Clinton still comes away with the edge in Supreme Court justices and in encouraging values. Yes, “Crooked” Hillary is still trusted as the values candidate here over Trump.
Where are his thanks to the American people now? Americans, however misguided they might be about other things, are apparently intelligent enough to realize you don’t want to put nuclear launch codes into Trump’s hands. And clearly, they can see where Trump’s ready use of insults isn’t going to go over big on the world stage.
Trump’s selective facts cannot disguise that he isn’t as popular as he says he is, nor as honest as the mainstream media says he is. It also cannot be disguised that when all the numbers are taken together, even the endless media barrage (in Trump’s favor) hasn’t convinced voters that Trump is the best man for the job.
Not that you’d know that by listening to Trump, who has never shown himself reluctant to free himself of the reality that binds us all.
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